so they want to help unpaid actors to spend more time doing unpaid work in moderating content on reddit and they have now granted exemption to tools those unpaid mods used to do their unpaid work. its brilliant.

you don't have to pay any mod for all the work they do and with this announcement, reddit seems to show that how great they are at at allowing exemption.

Does that even help? That's a huge reduction in userbase for third party apps, with little confidence reddit won't change their mind again.

Good. Hopefully those who prefer 3rd party apps for other reasons move their communities to other sites to foster competition

Soft packpedalling for PR purposes because the backlash does cost reddit a lot, even just in bad PR

Does that mean I can create a random throwaway sub, become its mod, and then be able to freely use the API?

Reddit is a website not an app. Reddit works great on desktop. I've never found the need for a Reddit App, not even the official one.

But I understand the Moderators before third party tools to be able to do there job, so this seems like a great idea. Problem solved?

Reddit is a social media platform, not just a website. The browser is _one_ method by which you can interface with the data. Apps are another. API is another too.

I think the blackout isn't enough.

Anyone that isn't being paid by Reddit to be a moderator should never undark their subreddits, and maybe that is extreme but it's silly that Reddit thinks it owns reddit and all of the work and posts that have been put on it.